


Turning the Bitter Rind Sweet

by Gammarad



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Feelings Realization, M/M, Mutual Pining, Self-Denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29426277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: Cala has a question he wants to ask his partner in private. It's not important at all, until it is.
Relationships: Cala Athmaza/Deret Beshelar
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Turning the Bitter Rind Sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophiegaladheon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiegaladheon/gifts).



The young woman's voice rose in excited gossip. "Amelo's told me that next year, she'll be living at the University of Zhaö. She's been accepted as a scholar there. Her mother is furious, but she's her father's favorite, so --" 

"How exciting," her friend exclaimed.

Cala didn't smile or frown or let on in any way that he was listening to the conversation. He was pleased by this evidence of change, or so he chose to consider it. He simply walked along the echoing Ethuveraz hallway and allowed himself to overhear.

"Why she wants to ruin her marriage prospects and waste her youth in books, we can't imagine," the young woman continued. "Not that our father would ever allow us to. But that's our good luck, the way we see it." 

This was less encouraging, but there was an edge to her tone. Cala sensed that distaste for learning was not entirely natural. Not feigned, she was sincere enough, but there was a hint that she would feel differently if the option had truly been available to her.

  


* * *

  


Cala usually got along with everyone. Once in a while there was a person who made it more difficult. But easygoing, intuitive Cala, who didn't expect more than anyone wanted to give, always ready with kind words or a sympathetic ear, rarely had a personality conflict he couldn't resolve. His nohecharis partner was initially resistant, but hadn't proven an exception. Since they'd first started working together, Cala and Deret had become friends. They got along very well most of the time. 

But Cala couldn't help being aware that Deret still disapproved of certain things about him. He had from the beginning, and that had never changed, though so much else had. Little improprieties that had been mentioned a few times very early on and never since, like the flyaway strands of Cala's hair that would not stay neatly in his queue, and the way the bottom edge of his robes dangled threads where he had stepped on them, no matter how often he mended the hem. 

They had to go up stairs so often, and Cala had never got the knack of walking up stairs without stepping on his robe. Before he'd been nohecharis, he'd hiked the robe up while climbing stairs, but that didn't suit the dignity of his position. Deret had made that clear without a word necessary.

In the eventful initial year of Edrehasivar's reign, the first nohecharei had gone through so much together and got to know one another well. In perspective, Deret's hidden disapproval of Cala's minor faults wasn't especially important. It should even be funny, when Cala thought about it abstractly, that such trivial things annoyed his partner. Cala tried very hard to be amused about the reactions, because that was what he thought he ought to feel. 

Sometimes, late at night, when he was almost asleep, he could manage. He could imagine the offended look (that was no longer ever actually visible) on Deret's face and feel bemused affection for a man who could spend half of every day for over a year in his company and still have the tenacity to continue to expect Cala to be anything other than what he was, to do anything different than what he'd always done. 

But it was never quite possible when in Deret's immediate proximity. The oppressive emotional miasma of the irritation and disappointment was too close, too entirely present. Even though it never showed on his face anymore, hadn't in months -- Cala had been watching for it -- the maza could feel it anyway, in the tilt of Deret's jawline, in the flick of his eyes toward Cala's hair, then away again, in the way he looked down to check the dangling threads when he walked past Cala for the fourth or fifth time on the Alcethmeret stair.

  


* * *

  


"We have heard, Serenity, that a young dach'osmin is being sent away to attend University, and certain of her friends think it foolish of her," Cala said one afternoon as he watched Edrehasivar take tea with his nieces. 

He hadn't been able to get the overheard discussion out of his mind. He thought perhaps hearing the young duchesses' opinions might help him solve the riddle of why.

"I don't want to go to University," Ino said, "I want to make clocks. Ones like your remarkable clock, Cousin Maia." 

Her sister laughed. "You wouldn't be allowed, Ino. We wouldn't either, would we?" Her sideways glance at Edrehasivar was shaded with potential interest, Cala thought. 

Deret's mouth twitched. There was something he very much wanted to say, Cala decided, but thought would be inappropriate, and the movement was because he had stopped himself from speaking. Cala saw this happen often. He always found himself imagining the words that might have been said and were not. Sometimes he asked Deret, later, and a very few of those times, was given answers.

Not once, Cala judged, and had great confidence in his judgment, had those answers been the complete truth.

"It's far too early to be making such decisions," Edrehasivar told the girls. "Work diligently with your tutor on your studies, and we shall see."

  


* * *

  


The next morning, scant hours after his shift on duty had ended, a visitor dropped by and woke Cala from a fog of dreams. The bag of fruit he'd brought as a gift had eased any unhappiness from the abrupt interruption of his sleep, and Toris had promised to return the next day, at a more reasonable hour, to tell Cala about his travels. Looking through the assortment, Cala remembered that the candied orange peel was one of his partner's favorites. He thought he could catch Deret before he finished his morning meal.

"Now this is a surprise. I thought thee asleep." 

"I would have been, but Toris woke me and gave me souvenirs from his travels. One of my former students. I am glad I find thee still at breakfast." Cala sat down next to Deret and pulled the small bag of preserved fruit from the pocket of his robe. 

He was rewarded with a smile of surprise and pleasure from his partner. "I love these. This dish will be much the better for them." Deret broke strips of sweet rind over his oatmeal and stirred the pieces in. "All they had this morning was currants." 

"Which thou likest not. I know thy habit is to practice thy skill with thy brethren of the Guard when hast a morning free, but I thought I might ask thee for some time," Cala began. 

A pause while one spoonful of candied-orange-bedecked oatmeal was savored, then another. "Dost not spend too much time with me already?" Deret did not mean this as a jibe, Cala knew, not after he'd brought a clearly appreciated gift. 

But it still stung. That was all of a piece with the thing he'd come to try to have out with his partner. It was all one thing, though Cala still didn't have the measure of what that thing was. "Thou and I converse for far too many hours of each day, indeed, and yet always in company. I would have a few words with thee not meant for the Alcethmeret's many ears."

Deret's ears flattened against his head. "I see." He finished his breakfast quickly. 

Cala had not meant to alarm him, but perhaps he had not been especially careful not to, either. He rose when his partner finished eating. They walked together to Usharsu's Ladder and paused in one of the recessed alcoves on the Court side of the covered bridge. 

"Here we have privacy," Deret said crisply. "What hast to say to me, maza?" This time, Cala believed it was meant to sting, the retreat to, not formality, but distance nevertheless. 

"Nothing untoward," Cala tried to reassure, but he knew it was not entirely true, and therefore unconvincing. "Only to ask thee a question that I cannot seem to ignore as I ought." 

"Then ask." Deret stood at soldierly attention, chin up. Braced for reproach, Cala judged.

"When I spoke this morning of the girls I overheard, it looked like thou wouldst speak, but didst not. What didst wish to say then?" 

Deret's ears went up in surprise. "That? That is what this is about?" He barked a laugh. "I could never have guessed. Cala, I think I know thee and then," he shook his head, not finishing the thought. "It was a thought I have often had. That the girl, like many others, seeing something that she could not have, sought for its flaws."

"I thought much the same when I overheard her." Cala turned over Deret's answer in his mind. It fit like a key in a lock, he felt satisfied with the answer and, beneath that, something else that he couldn't name yet. Something that grew like a bubble within him, slowly expanding. "Not sure I had ever thought about it before. Thou hast had this same thought _often_?"

"All the time." Now Deret frowned. "Thou hast not?"

"I don't do that." Cala felt a momentary indignation. "I've never been one to want what I cannot have."

"Thou'rt fortunate." Deret's hand came forward, clapped Cala on the shoulder. "Lookest exhausted, Cala. This is near thy rooms. Go and sleep, now that thy curiosity is satisfied." As he turned to go, Deret's gaze dipped to the trailing threads at the edge of Cala's hem. 

Cala watched his partner walk away, diminishing steadily into the distance, how he didn't look back even once. The bubble within him swelled and burst, a realization and an overwhelming rush of longing. 

Finding fault with the object of desire, yes. And now Cala, who never wanted what he couldn't have, knew beyond doubt that here was something he could have. That he could want. And oh, he wanted it.

It would probably take a good deal of arranging. But the other half of only ever wanting what he could have? It was this: what Cala wanted, Cala got. He had attained the title of dachenmaza. His new objective would be simple by comparison.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to gostaks and Rain for last minute beta reading


End file.
